


Second Star to the Right

by bangbang_dear



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, warnings for hospital and heavily implied death themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangbang_dear/pseuds/bangbang_dear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Joshua left a little too early, and Neku made a friend a little too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Star to the Right

            If you were among the freshly graduated nurses unfurling optimism from starry eyes and sunny grins, you assumed him an arts student and nothing more. If you were among the professionals more seasoned in the trade, clocking in hours of overtime for internships, counting your progress toward a brighter future in caffeinated beverages and eliminated Sx factors, you side-eyed him but ultimately had no spare energy to question his origin. And if you were a practitioner of highest seniority, you regularly found yourself performing a stomach-dropping double take when you passed him in corridors, only to remind yourself time and time again that, no, death is not an entity that graciously returns the things it takes. This is a truth you have grappled with for the entirety of your career, and that familiar face like a phantom threatens to uproot your self-indoctrinated resolve.

            But no matter what, no matter how many lazy finger wiggles the boy offers as greeting, no matter how eerie the coincidence of his musical talents may be, no matter the synonymous mannerisms and rhetoric, this simply was not that cheeky little snot you frequently accompanied to the tiny music room a floor down. And when music, nectarine and soft, drifts from that very room, you opt not to look in as you pass, because you have already learned that your heart will stutter and try through its palpitations to whisper, “It’s _him,_ it’s—“

            You avoid the room like a tombstone you never wanted to read, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s _here_ , and he comes and goes without warning, and no one stops him, because everyone would miss the music.

            The threshold to the music room, when the piano seat is occupied, turns more into a revolving door than a hinged one. Children come and go, and that is to be expected. They chatter while the boy plays, and the boy occasionally chatters back, but without fail, he pecks out whatever tune is requested of him. Mary Had a Little Lamb? Sure enough. Jingle Bells? Kind of early for carols, but Jingle Bells it is. Michael Jackson’s Thriller? A tad bit … peculiar but entirely doable. Occasionally, he was forced to insist on a hummed example when the song suggested was not cached in mind to be played by ear or from memory. And even if he brutally butchered what the kid had in mind, they got a kick out of watching him struggle.

            At some point, the impromptu mash-ups would dissolve into one continuous string of a melody, and its eventual flooding the hallways became as much an engrained part of the building as the patients’ art on the walls and the diagnostic machines whirring in corners. It was this phenomenon and the sunlight scraping the bottom panes of the windows that signaled to one resident in particular that the crowd had dispersed, making conditions ideally serene for his own listening in.

            Some days, the boy looked back at Neku the moment he hovered in the doorway, not missing a beat, and the keys resounded in jubilance, and he smiled in the manner of a friend known for years and years. Other days, the boy seemed hardly to see the keys beneath his fingers, much less a presence behind his back, and the lilting melody strained itself—tired. Contrived. The cheerful lyrics bouncing in Neku’s head by automation took a baleful turn in accordance.

_The second star to the right …_

_shines with a light …_

            Today was one such day.

            “Christ,” the boy sighed after some time of Neku playing the part of silent spectator, “no need to talk my ear off, you incessant chatterbox, you. Calm yourself.”

            If Neku had gathered one undeniable tidbit of information about the hospital’s serial pianist, it was that he spoke exclusively in music and in snide jokery. The music, mind you, communicated more personable volumes than any words ever tumbled out of the boy’s mouth.

            “I’m running out of witty piano puns to call you,” Neku reminded him, dutifully carrying out the ritual of fishing for the boy’s _name,_ at least.

            “Are you? You’re welcome to move onto violin-related word play.”

            Strike twelve. Neku had developed a callas against feeling personally offended by the kid’s evasive attitude.

            “The day you _actually_ show up with a violin, I’ll consider it.”

            The boy hummed dismissively, and his company was fairly sure that they would lapse into the resigned silence never far behind the prying and resultant subtle rejection. He was not entirely wrong. But the silence, unlike in previous instances, was not final.

            “Joshua.”

            Dumbstruck by the deviation from routine as he was, Neku could have counted every unruly swirl of hair flipping out from his head before he processed that, after weeks of persistent inquiry, jibing, prodding, he was being offered a _name_. A name and nothing more, and he suspected the boy would all but ignore him for the rest of his loitering there, but, somehow, it meant something to him. After all, how could you … _have a friend_ without a single syllable to assign to their face? Or even to the mellifluous call that seemed to beckon like a benign siren when the haze of day in, day out, worry, wonder, hope, worry became the thickest.

            And damn if he didn’t need a friend.

            “… Joshua.” His voice lingered between words, as if settling into the sound of it, finding footing in the new terms evolving between the two of them. “You know. There are other Disney classics. Besides Peter Pan. And they all have music you can play. I dunno if you were aware of that or not.”

            The boy—Joshua—breathed out a laugh that melded with the dulcet notes like an eighth octave in his lungs. “Believe it or not, O Harbinger of Highest Wisdoms, I am well aware. How it behooves me now that I extend my sad, piddly little repertoire deep into the bowels of Disney acclaim.”

            “Did you have to use the word bowels? It’s kind of gross.” Neku had come to stand near to the musician as he dared; approaching Joshua, somehow, struck a similarity to approaching a skittish animal. “… Why Peter Pan?”

            “We have a lot in common. Why else?”

            Yeah, okay, whatever. If this kid is anywhere as dirt poor as Peter Pan is, Neku will eat his boots. As long as he could sauté them first. “That right? Kindred spirits in being stuck-up brats? I can see it.”

            Joshua’s fingers stumbled, leaving a scarcely perceptible but awfully unsettling hole in the song’s fluidity. He lifted a smile toward Neku, and it was like the shed skin of what could have been mirth, hallow, true in shape but depthless in emotion. A pit fall dolled up with dimples and pearly whites that would have a person tumbling into empty space.

            “Neither one of us grew up.”

            A dissonant chord rang, and Joshua was gone.

 

 

_And if it’s Neverland you need,_

 

_its light will lead you there._


End file.
